After learning of her father's disappearance, a woman brings a group of friends to go with her to a strange island to investigate, and when they learn that he's become a flesh-eating zombie inadvertently brings him back to the mainline where he starts a zombie outbreak that overruns their town.
There was a lot to like with this one. One of the better aspects of this one is a rather fun setup that manages to bring this one into the universe. The introduction of the trip to the original island and the desire to find the missing father echo many of the same beats and storyline points from the original films and end up tying this together rather nicely. The outbreak that occurs with the residents getting attacked and turned into fellow zombies making for a lot of rather fun subtle highlights and homages to films of the past with either fun callbacks or re-creations of not just zombie attacks but just simplistic scenes in the middle of the sequence. There's a lot of that running throughout here and gives the film a rather solid old-school vibe which is quite enjoyable. That goes hand-in-hand with some fun zombie action that carries on throughout here. The rescue mission on the island that results in the capture of the main zombie and removal from there into the suburban landscape is quite fun and features some ingenious tactics to acquire that body in the condition they do. Likewise, the scenes of it going around the community taking out the victims in her living complex or the gang of partiers in the woods are rather fun as well with the creatures arriving out of nowhere and ambushing victims providing some decent gore-gags and deaths. Combined with the stellar indie gore and zombie make-up, these manage to give this one a lot to like. This one doesn't have much wrong but it's got some minor issues. The main element that would hold this back is the usage of all the background stock footage in the first half that features most of the characters reacting to footage of animals in a jungle environment rather than delve into any kind of zombie action. It does feel shoehorned into the action with the extended amount of time it takes up with them going through the jungle with the padding to the running time it provides. Likewise, there's also a rushed ending that just seems to end the film on a sudden beat, getting a certain beat across and then just ending which is a bit distracting but none of these are truly detrimental in the slightest.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, and Nudity.
